Queen's Co.

John, 2nd Earl of Portarlington (d.1845) became owner in fee of most of the borough and patron of the corporation on his father’s death in 1798. By then it had been reduced to the status of a burgess borough. On the Union ballot, Frederick Trench had the luck of the draw against his colleague the Castle official Gregory, but his creation as an Irish peer with the title of Ashtown, 27 Dec. 1800, prevented him from taking his seat at Westminster.Parl. Rep. [I] H.C. 1831-2 (519), xliii.

Portarlington, lying on the River Barrow with its left bank in King’s County and its right in Queen’s, had ‘little commerce’ and ‘no extensive manufactures’, the prosperity of its mainly Protestant population being ‘ascribed to its possessing a greater proportion of resident gentry than is generally to be found in towns of its size in Ireland’.